Death Stranding

[h3]Death Stranding[/h3] is a fascinating made third-person Action-Adventure Game with some elements of Shooter-Games as also a bit of Horror-Elements, and a well made and voiced-over story with lots of Cutscene. And of course it’s a Delivery-Simulator as well, no matter which weather or how dangerous it is, the first rule of the Protagonist is, to always deliver the Packages, tied to the theme that this way the Protagonist is re-connecting the world after a catastrophic Event. And the Game rewards the Player for this effort as every new Location added to a Network, called the UCA, will provide new Informations and sometimes new Tools that can be crafted and used in order to have different ways of delivering the Packages. And the Main-Story ties everything nicely together with lots of well made Cutscenes that could easily be adapted into a Movie. The Game’s strength is its Delivery-Simulator Part in which it gives the Players a lot of Freedom on how to approach each Delivery-Mission, and with each new Tool a new way to solve Problems. And each unlock motivates to unlock even more to see, more to find, more to explore. And as already mentioned, the cutscenes, well designed Characters, well animated and well spoken Dialoques that give the entire Game a very good Atmosphere, and it has a lot of that stuff in it. Each new Connection, a new Character, a new Story to discover. But there are also a few bad things about this Game that need to be mentioned, like when the Character is running (Controller) he sometimes behaves like he tries to defy the Input, ignoring sometimes the direction the joystick is pressed, or even not pressed and he is still running, or moving into another direction and then slip and falls over, damaging the cargo by the Character’s and not the Player’s fault. Also the Vehicles in the Game have tires that are qualitatively spoken, terrible, in a Game that is so much about Delivery it would have been expected that the Vehicles would have a better grip when driving around the Environment instead of sliding down a hill like a Sled on snow. And also the Locations added to the Network, the last few where difficult to max out, due to the Game not telling where to find the Missions aimed specifically for said Locations. Still, this Game is good and I recommend it to Players who enjoy an action-Adventure with Horror-Elements that is focused a lot about bringing Cargo from a to b over dangerous routes as best as possible. --------------------------------- [h3]Points i give this Game (average Points 7,01 / 10):[/h3] 8,4 / 10 Graphic (Old Game, but the Graphics where it is important is still holding up even today) 9 / 10 Art-Style (The Design of the Monsters and the Human-Enemies are well made and really make them shine as looking threatening) 7,5 / 10 Atmosphere (The Atmosphere is well made in the Areas where it counts, the only Problem there is tho that some sections on long routes can be a bit uneventfull) 8 / 10 Gameplay (Enjoyable Gameplay if Player is into Delivery-Simulator of course) 9,2 / 10 Main-Story (Definitly well made Story and could easily work for a good Movie, even a Franchise. By all the actors they used for motion tracking I wondering why they have not done that.) 7,2 / 10 Side-Story (Each Location is kinda a Side-Story, but after having their Trust maxed out feels kinda like out-of-the-picture, would have been nice to have a bit more involvement of those Side-Characters in the Main-Part) 9 / 10 Characters (Lots of well written and voiced Characters, and the Animations show that the Developers made great use of Motion-Capturing and of course Talent of actual Actors which makes them feel like real Humans would or at least could behave in such Situations) 5 / 10 Soundtrack (They have a lot of licenced Music in it, which was not a bad selected collection, but when it comes to the actual Soundtracks for Combat-Situations against Monsters and Enemies, that Part was not really giving much, could have been better there.) 9,5 / 10 Performance (Game was running well on high settings, only one crash I had during the entire Playthrough) 6,4 / 10 Content (For a Delivery-Simulation with just a few bits of Combat the Content works fine, but the variety of Mission-Types, so it would force the Player to use more different approaches could have been better) 3 / 10 Small-Bugs (There where Moments where the Character seems to do his own thing, which sometimes lead to him falling and damaging the cargo, like running into the wrong direction, or running without input and not stoping, or just those annoying moments when he stops running to look over his shoulders. And of course the constant getting stuck with a Vehicle when driving offroad on small rocks) 4 / 10 Multiplayer (sort of, it allows to use Vehicles and Structures from other Players, but because it picks those randomly and then from Players who placed theirs randomly, more than just once the structures or vehicles where blocking stuff than being helpful) 7 / 10 Online vs. Offline Mode (Offline works much better, in my opinion, but to keep maintaining all the structures, specifically the roads, can be a bit annoying after a while) 8 / 10 Enemies (On higher Difficulty-Levels the Enemies where definitely a nice challenge and even felt like they tried to make use of the Environment, still could be improved on how they would set up the traps for the next encounter with the Player) 4 / 10 Bossfights (The Bossfights are a weakpoint, sure their Design and introduction was nice, but the fight itself was mostly running around and trying to get their healthbar down than anything else, and then there was the end part where at one Bossfight the Game took away all my stuff and forced me to fight with a Rope only, and at another Part of the Game, not allowing me to craft any Tools at all, which felt like the Game changed from one Style to another without warning.)

this game could barely hold my attention, and then x hours in the story asked me backtrack to the start and then back to where i was at and at that point i was done. in my head, that never happened and the game just ends with a happy ending. maybe next overseas flight i'll play on my steam deck

Play on hard and don't rush to the end; you'll get about 220 hours of simulated work done before the final curtain. The overall experience is engrossing, dystopian and emotion inducing. The like system could use some work and in the later game I think the Half-life truck causes graphical corruption but largely the game was stable and never crashed.